The Arirang performance has resulted in aggressive military themes becoming less pronounced at the Mass Games. The Arirang narrative, however, is punctuated by choreographed performances highlighting North Korea's perceived achievements in building a socialist utopia, and visual representations of key moments in its revolutionary history, most notably its resistance to Japanese occupation in the first half of the 20th century and the Korean War. The backdrop, therefore, may still depict guns, missiles and determined DPRK soldiers, teeth, and bayonets flashing defiantly.

Review: Kimjongilia There is very little new in N.C. Heikin's documentary attack on North Korea's endless dictatorship that hasn't been seen or heard before.

The death of the American city, revisited Urban renewal is seldom discussed as anything but the great scourge of the American city — a disastrous post-World War II push to steamroll working-class neighborhoods and replace them with towering concrete buildings and cavernous plazas that sterilized once-vibrant places.

Review: Kimjongilia There is very little new in N.C. Heikin's documentary attack on North Korea's endless dictatorship that hasn't been seen or heard before.

The death of the American city, revisited Urban renewal is seldom discussed as anything but the great scourge of the American city — a disastrous post-World War II push to steamroll working-class neighborhoods and replace them with towering concrete buildings and cavernous plazas that sterilized once-vibrant places.

I was a teenage Sandinista As a freshman philosophy major at the University of Colorado, Deb Olin Unferth fell in love with a junior named George. A pious Evangelical, George felt it was his duty to help his Communist brethren in Central America fight against their capitalist oppressors. So he did, and Unferth went with him.

John Birch Society alive and confused in Maine The Maine arm of the John Birch Society, founded in 1958 to combat communist influence in government, visited the State House in Augusta last week, calling for legislators to, well, do nothing, as it turns out.

What's behind the curtain? Here's our third Gubernatorial Scorecard, in which we score Governor Paul LePage on political savvy, and on whether what he's trying to do is good policy. Note the running total.

This trickle-down stinks True free-market capitalism has lasted 30 years — barely half as long as its arch-enemy, Soviet communism.

Review: My Perestroika Socialism might be a dirty word in America, but for Russians during the Soviet era, it was the way things were.